you've been lonely too long
by AnyLessLost
Summary: she's never had anyone hate her so much and love her at the same time. he's never had someone who could both quiet and enrage his soul. sometimes it's like they were made for each other, put on this earth to both save and endanger each other. but they know better. a kyder collection.
1. you've been lonely too long

Hello! So I've been getting quite a few requests to write more Kyder, and I'm always itching to write more, to be quite honest, so I figured "Why not have a oneshot collection?" The only problem here is that I'm going to need prompts for you guys to keep me writing. A prompt can be absolutely _anything_. Of course, be smart about it! If I've never seen Gossip Girl, it'd be pretty hard to write "Quinn and Puck as Blair and Chuck", which I've actually received quite a few times.

I can't say I'll have the time (or the inspiration, mind you) to fulfill every prompt, but the ones that strike me as intriguing and I feel like I can write to fit Kitty and Ryder, I will of course do!

Of course, be original! I don't want to see another "Kitty and Ryder try to break Jarley up" request. Not that it's not a great prompt-It is- it's just already been done quite a few times, which is a hard accomplishment for such a small fandom.

Leave a review with your prompt, or if you want it for my eyes only, feel free to PM me.

Please note: None of these oneshots are going to be multi-chapter or related to each other. They may include trigger warnings, especially with mentions of sexual abuse. Just be on your toes. (: Thanks so much for showing interest into my mindless ideas about Kitty and Ryder.

Don't forget to follow/favorite!

P.S. Though I admit I did get the wonderful idea from the incredible Kyder fanfic queen, mad not sad, I don't plan on copying any aspects of her writing or her ideas or prompts in any way.


	2. no one can find the rewind button now

A/N: This is for a friend who requested a oneshot based on the song Breathe (2 AM) by Anna Nalick.

_'Cause you can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable_  
_And life's like an hourglass, glued to the table_  
_No one can find the rewind button, girl._  
_So cradle your head in your hands_  
_And breathe... just breathe,_  
_Oh breathe, just breathe_

* * *

marley knew she shouldn't have done the 'double major' thing. she should have just stayed with her composition major, but she just kept remembering all of the times she'd had to zip-tie her pants because the smallest pair in the juniors section of salvation army were still not small enough for her petite frame, or all of the times she went to school with only a half-eaten apple for breakfast, because the other half was badly bruised and took away her appetite just looking at it anyways. so she went with something a little more practical to fall back on, if she never became one of those singer-songwriters who walked into a spotlight with a piano in front of them and their words alone. however, being practical meant being kept up half the night finishing as much work as she possibly could before she passed out, and the dimmed light of her laptop monitor was really starting to hurt her eyes. the life of a scholarship student, she supposed.

her phone buzzed, which was odd, because none of her friends were the sort to be striking up conversations at two am. it buzzed again, letting her know it was a phone call instead of a text, and if that didn't alert marley, the name on the caller i.d. did. she's so dead tired that the name 'kitty' makes her think initially of a kitten, but then the photo of the two of them at their junior prom, a crown atop a head of curly blonde hair and two boys at the sides like bookends, reminds her that kitty is a person. it's been awhile since they had a real conversation. marley visited her once, in their sophomore year of college, and kitty visited her in their junior year in return. of course, most of that time of marley's visit was spent with ryder, who was in between training. still, they were on better terms than anyone could have imagined with their history, if far-off.

but why was kitty wilde calling her at two a.m.?

taking her phone outside to the balcony so her roommate couldn't be woken up, marley's face is etched with concern and curiosity. what could be going wrong in kitty's life to make her call? oh no, marley gasps to herself, but then is quick to remind herself that ryder was still in training, he wasn't deployed, nothing could have happened to him. plus, weren't they broken up now?

"kitty?" marley's voice is small and mousy, but this time it has a right to be because the sudden intake of breath on the other side of the phone call is too rough. kitty had either been crying really hard or fighting the urge to really hard.

"i made a mistake," kitty whisper-cries as a greeting, and marley stays quiet because she knows there's more to come, because kitty wilde wouldn't be calling her at two a.m. just because she made a mistake she was upset about. they were friends, but kitty was kitty. she wasn't going to alert anybody to anything she could face alone.

"i'm coming." marley says when kitty doesn't explain after all, and she knows when kitty doesn't object that she needed her to come, she just wasn't going to say so out loud.

* * *

when kitty wakes up to the sight of marley rose curled up on the loveseat, her first thought is to wonder why the hell didn't they switch sleeping places because really, marley was about half a foot taller than her and needed the extra length of the couch than kitty did, and oh wait, kitty lives here so why is she even on the couch in the first place? and why is marley here from three hours and four minutes away?

and then she remembers.

she's not really sure why it was taking so long for all of this to sink in. it's not like she was drinking last night. no, she was definitely not drinking. but she still doesn't quite remember breaking the glass off that separated the picture of her and ryder from the rest of the world and ripping it in half, but there it is, in the trash can. and there it is, a thin cut across her palm where the glass must've nicked her.

she also doesn't remember letting marley wrap her arms around her at six in the morning and she doesn't remember spilling her soul out to her over coffee mugs of steamed milk while marley offered the right words and the reluctant support of her decision, just like she knew she would. okay, maybe she does remember, she'd just rather not recall all of that.

so kitty wipes at the smudged mascara around her eyes and starts to get ready for the day ahead even though they slept for six hours and it's two p.m. now. she'd much rather crawl into the clean, cool sheets of her bed and forget about this, about him, and _it_, about everything. but that isn't an option. she has an appointment.

she remembers the look that marley had on her face like she didn't quite get what all the tears were about. of course, she didn't know about the series of arguments the two of them had in the living room alone. she didn't know about the time kitty had actually thrown something at him to (finally!) get his attention or the time ryder had snapped and drove all the way to baltimore to yell at kitty for breaking his heart for probably the thousandth time and also to give her latest boyfriend a black eye. but now marley knows just as well as kitty and ryder do, that they were _toxic_ for each other.

and that a child born out of that poison wouldn't be good for anybody.

she remembers marley asking "are you going to tell him?" and kitty saying "no. he's better off not knowing." because when she'd stumbled into her apartment after leaving her friend's party and seen him sitting there in a chair in her living room, leg bouncing up and down nervously, and eyes wide in fear of her reaction, she knew he was hurting just as much as she was. maybe even more. and when he'd kissed her, it was with no cruel intentions. he _was_ better off.

"do you still love him?" marley had asked after a long moment. kitty closed her eyes and looked out the moment. i love him when he's sober, and when he smiles. i love him when he makes dumb jokes, and i love him when he looks like the boy he was when i first spoke to him in that hallway after his grease audition, the one who smirked graciously at the slightest compliment, she wants to say. but she hadn't seen him since that night, hadn't spoken to him, or written him, didn't feel the slightest desire to. and there was something seriously fucked up about that.

"no," she said. "he's just like the only guy i've felt like i could ever trust myself with."

and she really can't believe that marley says it, even though they're both thinking the same thing. marley's just never been the one to say what didn't absolutely need to be said. "and then he got you pregnant."

"and then he got me pregnant." kitty agreed.

* * *

kitty's strong, or at least she looks like it on the outside. marley badly wants to do something to remind her of her support, but she's a little afraid touching kitty might shatter the exterior she's managed to keep intact.

it's crazy how everyone looks at you like you're a villain, kitty thinks, how when she and marley take their seats in the office of baltimore's one-and-only planned parenthood. (planned parenthood? kitty balks. what a stupid name when nearly everyone there is there because their latest case of parenthood was definitely _un_planned) the eyes of the people in the waiting room like her seem to try to reach out and prod her and say "you're not telling him? you're not even going to try to call him? you don't think he'd care to know what you're going to do?" hypocrites! kitty responds with sharp turn of her chin. you're all here for the same thing. don't look at me like that.

it angers her to no end. like her crime is worse than theirs when in reality, it's all the same. deep down inside, she knows they're looking at her and marley because they're probably the youngest people in there. but a twenty year old kitty faced with the same dilemma as a thirty year old one would still be sitting here.

in the end, kitty decides to leave marley in the waiting room.

in the end, the last thing kitty glimpses isn't marley's encouraging smile, but a small flower bush with downward facing round yellow petals through the window.

the physician comes in to meet with her and discuss the procedure. the physician is a man. kitty throws a hissy, and blathers about privacy issues and needing a woman doctor when really she's just remembering julie's older brother and the sound the zipper made when he tugged it down so he could touch her.

she insists that it has to a woman doctor, right now, today, right this very moment because this is the only way. really, she's just scared that without marley there waiting for her, willing to keep her secret, she won't go through with it. or she will, but something will happen to her and her heart when she leaves the clinic alone, much much more alone than she was before.

they do find a woman, steal her from another patient for kitty, and then they ask her questions. kitty hates the equally soft and equally intense voice of doctors. it makes everything worse. she says she started having sex at seventeen. only one partner, even though she'd let everyone believe that she and puck had done it in the back seat of her jeep after the sadie hawkins dance. instead, she'd all but hyperventilated when his fingers brushed by her underwear and then told him not right now, not tonight. really, she'd meant, not ever. he waited, but she never budged. the only person she'd ever let touch her again was him. when they ask her if her partner is supportive to her, she pauses. she has no idea what he'd say, what he'd do. maybe he'd pull himself out of his dirty rabbit hole. maybe he'd dig himself a deeper one and bury himself in it. either way, she just says "no."

when they strip her bare and shine a thousand-watt bulb on her so every flaw she'd ever had is revealed, she doesn't think about what they're going to remove from her, steal from her. she's still trying to remember the name of those damn yellow flowers because she just _knows_ she knows it.

and suddenly her mind shows her his brown eyes and his mussed flop of hair, and it's like a wave of those glass shards from the picture frame she broke last night is aiming at her heart, nipping and tearing at that, because she was trying her best today not to think of the days when his eyes were warm and molting, not detached and drowning in booze.

they were sitting in one of their last classes before they graduated, when their biology physics teacher ran out of things to teach, so he'd jumped into botany, though kitty was pretty sure it wasn't interesting or educational for anyone. they were talking about early-spring blooms and ryder was doodling an octopus and kitty was trying her best to stay awake so she stared intently at the newest slide, which featured a bush with those droopy yellow flowers. "hellebore," the teacher announced, and before she knew it, ryder's hand was on her thigh to balance himself as he leaned over to whisper in her ear with a dorky smirk. "this class is hellebore-ing," he joked, and it was so dumb, it made her smile.

"i'd say you're about five or six weeks," the physician says and kitty wants to smash something. why the hell do they train these doctors to tell them these things when it shouldn't matter anymore? why would they say that, dammit? she'd already paid her three hundred whatever dollars, already made it here, was already laying here at their mercy. why the _hell_ would they say something like that now?

"stop" kitty says, quietly at first, and then once again really loudly. the counselor calls her _sweetheart_ and helps her sit up. the physician rubs her hands together and then nods as if they were waiting her to say so all along and walks out.

when the room is empty, kitty lowers her head into her hands. tears don't come, but she has to force herself to breathe.

* * *

they stand outside so marley can get some air now. kitty can tell the other girl didn't like this idea one little bit, but she stuck through it. when kitty walked into the waiting room, marley stood up instantly, face pale. now she looks at kitty with wide, concerned eyes.

"i didn't do it," kitty says, admittedly the tiniest bit smug at surprising marley with this. marley doesn't ask her if she's sure, because she's scared of making her question it. she's just so afraid that kitty won't stick to this decision, or that kitty will do something worse.

but kitty didn't stop because of sudden compassion. well, maybe a little, but mostly she did it out of stupidity and stubbornness, and her inability to accept the fact that ryder isn't coming back.

then kitty does another thing that surprises marley. she bends down near a bush of sad-looking yellow flowers and plucks the petals off and slides them into her hands.

later, after a quiet lunch, marley gathers up her clothes, and sees kitty slip the petals into a envelope. "call me," marley orders kitty to do just before she gets back into her car, because she's going to need somebody now or many people and marley insists on being one of them.

kitty knows she will. there's just so many things you can go through in life with someone else before you know for sure they're sticking around. marley rose is sticking around.

* * *

ryder opens the envelope and his face reddens when it's just petals, blackened and curled in around the edges. it's bad enough that he hardly ever has anyone calling him or skyping him, since he's lucky enough to be able to do that in the army, but that this is what he's sent in the rare moment he does get something? the other guys laugh at him and ryder hastily turns the envelope around to see who the hell would have the gall to send him dead flower petals for his birthday, and he sure hopes it doesn't show on his face when his heart skips a beat at the _k_ and the _w_.

because he hasn't heard from her since he last since he dug up his spare key to her apartment and walked in the door to find her gone, until she walked in too, cheeks pink and blonde hair in soft curls. and after she rubbed in his face how much of an idiot and a loser and a failure he was, she still kissed his lips and pulled him inside and held him and he held her back. then he was gone the next day.

the memory is so fresh in his mind, it rips at him, and suddenly it feels like he either has to tear those petals to shreds or throw his flask across his room.

he doesn't remember when a beer went from being something he swigged at once a month because something he nursed once a week, and then something he needed to get through the day. probably when his grades got so bad he was called into the dean's office at the college and saw the truth that was there was no way in heaven, earth, or hell he would ever be a doctor, a real phd doctor. or the day his babysitter got out of jail. or the day kitty's casual insult got him so mad he slammed the door so hard the woman in the neighboring apartment came out to make sure everyone was okay. or the day his mother stopped breathing. he can't pinpoint it. he only knows it got worse and worse, and here he was. he doesn't remember what it's like to get angry and not have it show in every facet of your being.

the last time he was sober was october of the last year. maybe september.

he'd been kicked out of training three times now, but his father always somehow got him back in. if not his father, then one of his doctor friends who reassured his sergeant that the only way ryder could be saved was to keep him where he was so he could learn how to cope. but ryder knew that was a lie. the only thing that could save him was in maryland, but she only cared enough to torture him on his twenty-first birthday.

wasn't it a damn thing, to be the most sober you had been in the past five months on your twenty-first birthday?

as ryder cleans up the mess of his birthday presents- plus the postcard jake sent him from julliard, a card from tina, the letter marley sent from nyu (all of it emphasizing a lot on getting better, oddly enough) and the picture of his dad and his little brother- he cleans up the petals. he's just about to shove them underneath the paper of the envelopes and the wrapping when he remembers. he remembers. he remembers the strange joy he felt at walking into physics that last month to see his girl sitting by his seat, and pictures on the board that didn't have to do numbers or letters. he never told her that, but he loved botany. he even thought about being a botanist at the last moment, but he'd never heard of anyone being a botanist, and how successful could they be, then, really?

but he remembers the octopus and the yellow bush and the satisfied smile she'd flashed at him after he made his joke. and it's not really a remarkable memory, but it's still perfect, and it's who they were then. and he misses it. he misses it so much it makes him ache.

usually, when he aches, he takes a long gulp from his flask. but he knows that won't help this kind of ache. and the misery he feels at finally facing that reality makes him cradle his head.

he picks up his phone and dials her number and says for maybe the eighth time "i want to try again", but he means it more now than he did any of the other times.

"you can't just try." she tells him in a flat tone, serious when he'd wish she'd just be light for once. but her voice is such a release, like her voice was a needle that popped the over-inflated balloon embedding into his chest.

"i know."

"no, you don't." she reassures him, because he really doesn't know how serious he has to be about this right now for her to even consider walking into her life again.

it's silent for a really long time, and it sounds like her breath is hitching and oh god, is she going to cry? he's only ever seen her cry once. she never cries when she's sad, only when she's scared. what does she have to be afraid of?

"i need you," she admits, because he's the only one she can admit it to when she does. because even though he's been a total jackass for the past three years and he probably needs to be locked up in a psych ward and is pretty much risking his worthless life every day by being borderline shit-faced while training for the army of all things, he always comes when she needs him. so he comes now.

* * *

when his sergeant drives him to a car rental, he tells him he needs to leave for a family emergency. he doesn't tell him he doesn't plan on coming back.

he listens to r.e.m. all ten hours of the way to kitty's apartment, and remembers. he calls his dad and tells him he's leaving the army, and he's not going to be a doctor, never wanted to be, and maybe he's going to draw octopi for a living or be a botanist and either way, he'd rather money be given to psychiatrists who really want to help with his drinking/anger/coping issues instead of bribing psychiatrists who've never met him to speak on his behalf and if he didn't like that, that's fine, he'll see you later, and _thanks for telling him happy birthday by the way_.

* * *

ryder walks right into the apartment with his key and drops his bag by the door, because he's staying, he's staying, and even if she shoves him out butt-naked at four in the morning, he'll just stay at a hotel until she lets him come in again. or a motel, with what little money he has to work with.

she's in the kitchen, textbook in her lap, wide awake, waiting on him even though it's like midnight and there's circles under her eyes and she looks dead tired. he wants to tug her off the stool and hold her, but she suddenly looks like she's looking at a ghost instead of ryder lynn. but a flicker of light and it's gone and she doesn't smile, just stands so he can wrap his arms around her waist and exhales contentedly. it's only later when he's at the oven making scrambled eggs that she tells him.

"i'm pregnant," she says and he turns to look at her and nearly lays his hand in the pan in his haste. but she's serious. she's deadly serious. she's so serious she lifts up her camisole to show him the nearly invisible bulge of her abdomen.

he should be pissed. he really is and he wants to start yelling. but right now there's no metallic taste in his mouth and no tingling in his fingertips, and he's kind of happy at just the prospect of kitty being a mother and then it settles in that he's the father, he's a father.

he should curse her for letting him go- what? three months? four?- without having a clue, but she had a reason. she had a thousand. and he's so angry and happy and ashamed and disappointed he has to cut off the stove and count backward from a hundred and breathe deeply. and she know he's trying his own hand at coping that didn't involve bourbon or punching a hole in a wall or letting his eyes get red, so she lays a hand on his neck and god, it helps so _so_ much.

* * *

it isn't easy. it's probably the hardest damn thing they've ever done and a baby should be giving them more reason to stay together but lately it's been driving them apart because the stakes are higher, way higher.

at first, they have trouble just agreeing on what to eat for lunch and do they need to get a bigger apartment and can you please stop going through my phone there's nothing to see i promise. then it's about ryder being unemployed and kitty's mom is really bitter about them not being married, and then ryder admits that he prefers the baby to be a boy and kitty's mad because _you're not supposed to say that, ryder, you're supposed to say you just want the baby to be healthy_ and then kitty goes with ryder to support him during his therapy sessions and he starts accusing her of supervising him instead of trusting him but eventually he and his therapist deduce that he's saying that because it's harder to admit to her that he thinks he's a piece of shit than it is to admit it to himself.

ryder has five hotel bills for one-night-stays in two months and has had seven unsuccessful job interviews (which might have something to do with his dishonorable discharge) and kitty has threatened looking into adoption twice (_"which is really fucking low of you, kitty wilde"_) and called marley almost once a day just so she can vent her many many frequent frustrations with ryder lynn. but he knows if he stops he'll never see her again and maybe his kid, too and kitty knows if she gets scared and pushes him away, she'll probably never see him again and maybe won't love her baby like she's really supposed to, and she wants to be a whole person again and so does he.

so they figure it out. and it's the hardest thing they've ever had to do. but it's worth it to smile at the sight of each other every morning and have it be real, and it's worth it when they bring their son home, and it's worth it, it's really _damn_ worth it.

* * *

_But you can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable,_  
_And life's like an hourglass, glued to the table_  
_No one can find the rewind button now_  
_Sing it if you understand._  
_and breathe, just breathe_  
_woah breathe, just breathe,_  
_Oh breathe, just breathe,_  
_Oh breathe, just breathe. _

* * *

Please review and request.


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